Karuna Group bans Tamil daily

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 17 March 2004, 07:10 GMT]
The Karuna Group, led by the renegade LTTE regional leader, Mr. V. Muraleetharan, stopped the distribution of a popular Tamil daily in the Batticaloa Amparai districts from Wednesday. Armed cadres from the Karuna Group had threatened manager of the Thinakkural paper's regional office in Batticaloa with death. The paper was not sold in Batticaloa Wednesday.

Distributors of the Thinakkural daily in Batticaloa told TamilNet that transporters who bring the paper to the eastern district were also threatened by the Karuna Group.

Last week, thousands of copies of the mass circulation Tamil dailies, Thinakkural and Virakesari, were seized from shops in Batticaloa town by Karuna Group cadres and were set on fire.